The roof was occupied by a score of men armed with the lightning weapon, and among them glanced the familiar badge--the band and silver star.

Clambering over the walls of the wide enclosure, and threatening to storm the house, were a mob perhaps a thousand in number, many of them similarly armed, the rest with staves, spears, or such rude weapons as chance might afford.

Two minutes brought me immediately over them.

In another, I was descending more rapidly than prudence would have suggested.

The strife seemed for a moment to cease, as one of the crowd pointed, not to the impending destruction overhead, but to some object apparently at an equal elevation to westward.